Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system

bconway · on March 17, 2011

For many years, MIT had no operating systems course. In the fall of 2002, Frans Kaashoek, Josh Cates, and Emil Sit created a new, experimental course (6.097)...

That seems pretty shocking, unless they meant in name only. What was the next closest thing?

aidenn0 · on March 17, 2011

"Students doubted the relevance of an obsolete 30-year-old operating system written in an obsolete programming language"

And an operating system not used in the industry but just used for teaching is going to be more credibly relevant?

Luyt · on March 18, 2011

I saw this fragment in the source code:

    case T_IRQ0:
        // Bochs generates spurious IDE1 interrupts. 
        break;

Evidence that they run their educational OS in a virtual machine.

jrockway · on March 17, 2011

I'm looking forward to version 11, so I can ask a question like "can you run X11R6 on X6R11?".